NASA Receives 400 Proposals for Asteroid Mission

29 July 2013
NASA has received more than 400 proposals from private companies, non-profits, and international organizations in response to a request for asteroid-retrieval mission suggestions released last month, agency officials announced Friday, 26 July. NASA is expected to review the submissions over the next month and plans to discuss the most promising ideas in a public workshop in September. NASA issued an official request for information on 18 June to seek input on how to achieve its asteroid retrieval mission. The NASA asteroid retrieval mission aims to send a robotic spacecraft to a near-Earth asteroid, capture it with a "space lasso" and tow it back to a parking orbit near the moon to be explored by astronauts. (Image Credit: NASA)More Info > (Space.com)